Slashdot Mirror
University Reprimands Professor For Assigning Cheaper Textbook (slate.com)
schwit1 writes: California State University at Fullerton brought a grievance against associate professor Alain Bourget recently. It wasn't for poor results or questionable conduct — it happened because Bourget refused to assign a $180 textbook for his introductory linear algebra and differential equations course, instead using one that cost $75 and supplementing it with free online materials. "Bourget maintains that his choices are just as effective educationally and much less expensive, so he should have the right to use them. But the university says that it makes sense for courses that have multiple sections to all use the same textbooks. Both Bourget and the university say their positions are based on principles of academic freedom."
If other course as the university use the more expensive text book, then fuck this guy... He's not made them buy a cheaper textbook, he's made them buy two textbooks, one of which is very expensive.
The Fullerton text in question is Differential Equations and Linear Algebra, published by Pearson with a suggested price of $196, but available at the Fullerton bookstore for $180 (used editions for much less). The authors are Stephen W. Goode and Scott A. Annin, the chair and vice chair, respectively, of the mathematics department at Fullerton.
Now it all makes sense.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
He has tenure, which is a binding contract meaning you cannot be fired no matter what. Most of the things that are messed up in our higher educational system today can be traced back to tenure and unions. Someone needs to start a university free of those shackles and they probably could cut tuition prices by at least 50%.
Quote from the article:
"Sensitive to the idea that the university could be promoting the book because its authors are faculty members ....."
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Whomever is above Dr. Bourget is clearly getting a kickback from the publisher and is mandating the same textbook to be used in order to boost profit.
I've worked at a bunch of different universities in California and making students use the same textbook across sections is definitely not standard behavior. If anything, departments don't want to have to do that work and encourage teachers to figure it out for themselves.
The university should be much more concerned about the financial motivations of those in administrative positions over Dr. Bourget.
It seems that some academics want to be more free than others.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
I was a professor at a major engineering school, and I got tired of the Institute forcing me to do everything in their prescribed bureaucratic way. Every decision was designed to line someone's pocket. Which textbooks to use, which equipment was required for labs, and even the labs were designed to use sole-source parts from particular vendors (Altera PLDs, for example).
There is no academic freedom in academia. None whatsoever. So, I quit. I started my own company and have never been happier.
that universities are at best, a money-hungry business, at worst, a cult designed to create a two-tier society where even the simplest jobs require a university degree.
During the early 1990's, math textbooks started requiring a graphing calculator. Not just any graphing calculator, but a specific model of the Texas Instruments graphing calculator. If you had a different model or brand, you were on your own as the instructors didn't have time to figure out the four or five other graphing calculators in the classroom. Math textbook and graphing calculator cost $200, which was twice the cost of going full time to the community college at the time.
I went from owning an HP calculator that did Reverse Polish Notation to several models of the TI graphing calculator. I still have them today. Never got around to owning an HP calculator that could take cartridges, say, Missile Command, to extend its functionality. That particular calculator cost $500 or so. More appropriate for the engineering crowd at the university.
Fortunately, I was very much old school towards learning mathematics. When I showed up for an exam without my graphing calculator, I was able to sketch the graph by hand. Other students who forgot their graphing calculator weren't so lucky, as they couldn't graph their way out of a paper bag. I've known several students who dropped out of school because they couldn't afford the latest and greatest calculator for the newest math textbook. The financial aid office came up with a program to help students with buying calculators.
The professor is teaching one section of a class where different sections are taught by different faculty. As all the students - regardless of which section they are enrolled in - are enrolled in the same course, they should all be studying the same material. While it is not impossible to ensure that this happens when different sections use different texts, it is a lot easier to ensure that this happens when everyone does use the same text.
I say the professor should have brought up his concerns with the text book earlier; although working in academia I suspect he may have himself been assigned to teach that section without enough time to do so.
In other words, there is blame to go around.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
....and in the comments section it mentions that the department started using this book in 1989, 15 years before the author became department chair.
Also, it mentions that the course-approved book rents for much less than the rebel-chosen book.
So obviously there's more to the story than the simple venal corruption that's implied.
- it seems a conflict of interest when a department is *requiring* the use of a book from which the department head(s) directly profit; then again, if my department is using book X, and we can "get" as a professor the author of said book, I'd do it for sure.
- it also seems pretty reasonable that a department would agree to teach from a consistent set of books, especially for lower-level courses, so as to provide a consistent contextual base for all students in later classes; do they do so in other departments?
I don't have any answers to resolve this, frankly.
-Styopa
The professor has a solid ethics case against the school fot a clear conflict of interest case. The reprimand could get the school in serious legal trouble.
The truth shall set you free!
At my college they used a new text book for algebra every year.
Why? I asked, it's the same math nothing has changed over that year.
You know why.
$
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Seriously - there's no current events that impact how we do linear algebra and diff equations, nor have the concepts changed in hundreds of years. So why the hell aren't we using public domain textbooks?! Well, we all know why, but how do we go about changing the money grab?
A professor assigning a textbook that he or she wrote happens fairly often as people tend to write texts for courses that they teach often, and tend to write texts when they are not happy with what options are already out there, and they generally think that they cover things in the best way possible, since they wrote it. Often a text evolves from course notes and is shopped around to various publishers, one of which is happy to accept it and polish it up and charge extortionate prices for it. If it gets adopted on its own merits at other institutions, great for the publisher and author.
But there is an obvious conflict of interest when a faculty member requires a text that he or she wrote for a course at the home institution, as the author/instructor gets some of the money (not much, though, even for a $180 text, I'm afraid.) At a normal university with standards and ethics, there generally is a mechanism for making textbook adoption decisions revenue-neutral for the instructor. I know of places where the part of the proceeds from the sale at the home institution of the author is sent directly from the publisher to something like the department colloquium fund, or sometimes if the publisher can't cope with the complexity, the author just donates the apportioned proceeds from sales at the home institution to a student support fund or tutoring lab or something like that.
Apparently, in this department, there is no such mechanism for the revenue (or the authors are not worried about the conflict of interest) and the authors apparently do get money from the text being required at their own institution. It is easy to see how another faculty member, now tenured, can feel that it is unfair for the text to be required, if the text isn't that great (most aren't) and if the money is going to his or her department members despite the fact that it is not the best value book. When the people profiting in question are part of the department administration (chair, assistant chair) that makes resistance more difficult, as department staff can retaliate in various obvious and subtle ways and there can be pressure to comply with unethical practices.
At a normal university, there would be conflict-of-interest policies that apply and would probably prevent a department from forming a policy to require a course purchase which benefits a faculty member financially. At Cal State Fullerton, either there aren't any strong policies, or they are being ignored, apparently. The instructor who is not following this unethical policy does have tenure (his wife is also tenured in the same department) so though he can't be readily dismissed or denied tenure, but still because the people who are financially impacted by this make decisions which can affect him and his wife, this is big headache.
There has been support from faculty in other departments which is a good sign but the fact that it got this far is one sign of an unhappy dysfunctional math department. There are hundreds of commodity linear algebra and differential equations textbooks out there, with lots of different approaches. Most of them are terrible, but there are enough good ones that this kerfluffle seems pretty ridiculous.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
While 75 dollars is a significant savings over 180, why stop there? I just did a search on "linear algebra" on Google Shopping, and I can see three books from Dover Publications in there, with a combined cost of $33.18. While I'm sure they're terrible at explaining linear algebra to someone who doesn't already know linear algebra, I'm equally sure that the 75 and 180 dollar versions are terrible as well. I'd rather have three concise terrible math books books plus 40-150 dollars than one really heavy terrible math book.
This has been going on for a long time. Around 15 years ago, I bought a $180 book, which was nothing more than a comb-bound Numerical Linear Algebra notebook of around 150 pages. The professor on campus wrote the text but forgot to put whitespace in the formatting so all formulas and examples were run inline with the text. Anyway, after slogging through that horrible tomb all semester, I went to the Buy Back on campus and was offered $1.00, yeah, 100 pennies. Same book (same printing, same edition) was used the next semester. I kept the book and burned it. I kept many other campus books (the algebra book was the only one I burned). Now, when the University calls me or sends me any correspondence in the mail, asking for money, I tell them a big fat NO! AND I send their correspondence back to them with nothing in the envelope, of course, and only the Business Reply type of mail, so they have to pay for postage, and tell them another big fat NO! And they still ask for money and it's a state run school that gets funding from the state! Cui Bono for sure. Somebody has some 'splaining to do!
So you need a $180 book for introductory differential equation and linear algebra? Is learning mathematics a privilege? The heck with it.
I'd bootleg an electronic copy if I were to forced to use it as a student.
Anecdote: When I studied those subjects (not crammed into one book) I loaned Prof. Gilbert Strang's Linear Algebra and Its Applications and bought a dirt-cheap 2nd-hand copy of Prof. Vladimir I. Arnold's Ordinary Differential Equations. The monetary cost was negligible and I was massively satisfied with their quality. The "curriculum" course books were mostly used for the exercises only so I just copied the exercises from someone else's book. The lectures themselves didn't require textbooks at all -- the lecturer hardly referred to the books during the lecture. It was all self-contained.
If you don't have the latest edition, you're really missing out on all the latest fundamental mathematics discovered in the last 12 months..
This really is plain insanity. The cost of a university education is well out of control, and textbooks aren't helping.
While I agree that having the same coursebook over a whole section (i.e. All Math 101 classes use the same book, which hopefully Math 201 also use..) I do believe that our educators should have a hand in which textbook is selected. Unless the group deciding what textbook is used, teach from said textbook, they need to take a backseat and listen to the people on the front lines. Cost is one valid factor when deciding what to choose. Education like this is as much a business as it is an academic exercise. When your consumers can't afford the product you sell, you have fewer consumers.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Schools should be teaching concepts and critical thinking, rather than how to perform to the conditions of a particular book. As long as this teacher's students are actually learning the material, there is no need for the university to enforce conformity among the various sections.
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds..." - Emerson
Yeah, it seems insanely low. Given the monopoly power of the schools — they control, which books can be used — they could ask for your first-born child as well.
The Big Ed's shenanigans are far worse than those of the regularly-condemned Big Oil and Big Pharma, for example, and they are long overdue for some Congressional scrutiny.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Create a "Credit Union" version of the University - open sourced books, leverage videos, implement real world methodologies into projects, and foster ethical and professional behavior across all disciplines. Drive to create a true non-profit organization centered on delivering actual education and value back to the middle class students who need that accredited degree to get their foot int he door professionally.
Our President and business leaders talks a good game about promoting STEM and education in this country, but won't do anything to overhaul the terrible system that is our college system. Make it affordable, practical, and worthwhile.
Of course, the same could be said about our health care system, too.
Let's leave aside the pricing of the books for a moment since that is something for students (and teachers) to complain about to the institution (and potentially to the state since this is a state university). As far as actually just swapping out the assigned book for another, remember that this guy is an employee. He needs to do what the employer pays him to do (which unfortunately seems to be to pimp the chair and vice chair's overpriced book). Can you imagine if a construction worker on say a bridge unilaterally switched out parts for cheaper ones? Yeah, you don't do that. This guy should go through channels. What he is doing is simple insubordination and should be dealt with accordingly.
The reprimand could get the school in serious legal trouble.
Probably, but even if you have a legal case against your employer, bringing up a that case creates a relationship between you where they will look for the first opportunity to get rid of you, or make your life so miserable that you quit voluntarily.
You can only bring up a case like that if you intent to look for a job elsewhere anyway.
I am OK with DRM on Tailor Swift songs and proprietory word processors. But copyrighted mathematics? Seriously? Claiming exclusive right to facts and laws of nature?
I see many comments saying something along the lines of department chairs / professors "lining their pockets" by requiring books that they wrote.
While it very well may be an ego thing, it is definitely NOT a money thing. My wife has written many collegiate level textbooks and they are used at many different schools. She netted a whopping $600 in royalties for 2014. The authors are not getting rich on sales of textbooks. Their salaries dwarf what they earn for publications.
Next conspiracy theory ...
While I'd like to support the guy that's trying to save his students some money, his colleague & supporter Hassan is nuts, and making his position sound irrational: "If the university thinks you are good enough to teach the course, they should let you pick the materials," he said.
A world full of "We can do whatever the hell we want", is not a place I'd want to live. I would be furious if semesters 1, 2 & 3 of a course each required a DIFFERENT BOOK, instead of using the same one. Perhaps all three books having been written by each professor... Perhaps all three costing $180 a piece!
While the $75 book sounds like a better deal than the $180 book, it isn't so good for students that continue into the next course, under a different professor, and thus still need to buy that $180 book, in addition to that previous $75 down the drain.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
the 'community' whi3h allows of reality. Keep So on, FreeBSD went
Larson: $279
http://www.amazon.com/Elementa...
Poole: $274
http://www.amazon.com/Linear-A...
Williams: $206
http://www.amazon.com/Algebra-...
By contrast:
Strang: $66
(Intro to Linear Algebra, 4e, 2009)
http://www.amazon.com/Introduc...
But also:
Strang: $322
(Linear Algebra and its Applications, 4e, 2005)
http://www.amazon.com/Linear-A...
Of course what makes this racket even worse, there's been nothing new in the field of Linear Algebra for over 100 years. A textbook written in 1915 would be just as usable as one written today.
I better go back and study the differential equations before I loose my degree. The changes must be tremendous if new expensive books are necessary to teach the subject.
If he brought a book in that was directly in conflict with the chair's book, I'd say he was already there.
They had the assigned textbook, and a list of suggested textbooks. Either way, the instructor assigned their own problems, usually a mix from the instructor's manual and of their own creation. In the case of readings, they gave the topic and (in the case of the assigned textbook) section numbers for the current and prior editions. The student was by no means obligated to buy the assigned or recommended textbooks. They could use a book of their own choosing, online resources, or simply rely upon lectures.
University is different from primary or secondary school. While students are expected to meet certain requirements for learning, learning is mostly the responsibility of the student.
While I can understand the argument that a common textbook makes it easier to teach the same material to multiple sections, it's not necessary if the teacher or professor covers all the necessary material.
While I was enrolled as an engineer, one math professor decided he didn't like the textbook being used to teach the course. It was wordy, confusing, and generally not well-written. So, he embarked to write his own book that would be much easier to utilize while teaching calculus courses. He wrote up all of his lecture notes in textbook-like form for easy compilation later, and passed them out to his students for free with each lecture. His notes were very easy to comprehend and matched up with his classes very well. Everyone enjoyed having him as a professor because he actually cared that his students understood the material better.
In his case, sure there was some future financial gain in it for him. (After he found a way to get everything published.) But, it was more about his ability to teach the students effectively. Other professors didn't care that he used his own teaching method or didn't use the standard textbook for his courses. And we all turned out just fine because he still taught all of the material, just in his own way.
BR I guess my point is this: let the teachers choose their own methods, as long as they teach the students the required material. Oftentimes, this can result in greater effectiveness, as it's more comfortable for the person doing the teaching. And that, in turn, usually translates into better learning of the material by the persons being taught. Don't just railroad everyone into doing the same thing. That's how we get all of this common core and standardized testing BS that doesn't really do anything for the teachers or the students.
Bite my shiny metal ass!
As an part time adjunct, I am free to choose what book I want to use as long as I agree to use it for three years. Having said that, I always consider the cost of a book when I am looking for one to use for a class. I am actually working on a curriculum for a course I teach to forgo text books entirely. Instead I would use readily available documents for source material.
" Given the monopoly power of the schools...they could ask for your first-born child as well."
That's what tuition is for. Textbooks are just a side racket.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The Sharp had one thing none of the others (at that time -- early 80's) did. Playback.
You entered in up to 50 "button pushes" of whatever, and hit =. To check you entered it all, you hit PB (playback) and you could then scroll through every bit of it. It also had 6 memory locations you could draw from. The others in its price range had 2.
No other calculator came close (at that time), even at 3 times the money. [I guess they are up to 142 steps now.]
Fond, fond memories of that product. From sharp minds indeed. I didn't go out of my way to convince my felow 'geers about its virtues...
I come here for the love
I had a professor who wrote his own textbook and as part of the proof-reading and editing, all we had to do was pay the printing costs at the local Kinko's.
Although, Kinko's did charge a bit for the printing but is was also about $30.
There were a few times that I had multi semester courses and at the start of the new year, we had to buy the latest and greatest edition - at $200 a pop.
And what kills me is that at the undergraduate level where there hasn't been much if any discoveries in the last century, using anything other than a $15 Dover edition of a classic textbook is just unethical.
The Dover edition of calculus and differential equations are perfect. Same goes for undergrad chemistry and physics.
Don't get me started on the highway robbery of business books!
Computer science?! How about O'Reilly books at the undergrad level - and internet sources because online will have the latest. Textbooks are 10 years out of date.
1) as is common, the SAME course is taught at different times, on different days, by different teachers
This allows the students choice, which I think maybe once or twice has been mentioned as good on slashdot
you have a big exam on wensday another course, you can take that days math course on Fri instead of wensday
obviously, you need consistency across the different sections
2) Text book prices are out of control and the ethics of the professors are
however, aside from professors, who is qualified to write a textbook ?
this has been going on forever; in 1975, the author of my Russian language 101 noted in the preface that he thanked his students for putting up with drafts....
seriously: who else knows the technical material and the pedagogy ?
A linear algebra "text" that consisted of a dozen iPython notebooks would be WAY more informative to a student than any paper textbook. The ability to change parameters in the examples and graphically see how matrices transform would be the way I would want to see the course materials.
Anyone want to wager when textbooks will hit $1,000?
Also likely can't fail any one as well as that hurts the schools income.
Without a hint or irony no doubt, their twitter account @csuf just posted this:
Davis: 2015 year of firsts in data crime and cyber security. No. 1 concern: disgruntled employees. #economicforecast
Oct 29, 2015
I had elementary electronics classes where the instructors would use old Navy books because they were cheaper. They worked fine.
Imagine the wasted money, time, and human effort that could be saved from not rewriting the same books every few years. Imagine all the good that could be achieved not just in California, or the US, but the entire world, if textbooks where open source. The only losers would be the textbook publishers and those receiving their kickbacks.
Worked for a university for years, started off part-time at the bookstore in the heady days before the Internet and Amazon.com. The reason a department chose a common book to teach from back then was to save money. A consensus vote would be done to choose a common book for the class sections because then the university bookstore (often owned by the university or a 501(c)3 non-profit auxiliary) would buy those textbooks in bulk and save money on their purchase to generate more revenue to cover personnel costs in the bookstore from the markup. That was the ONLY reason they chose a common book, that and to save the bookstore shelf space from having six different books for one course, but it was all about money.
Fast forward a few years of my career and I was doing graduate teaching and learned that the syllabus for a course determines the topics covered, not the textbook. Anyone who's ever taken a class, even in k-12, knows that you rarely if ever cover everything in the book nor in the exact order that it appears. Of course, the syllabus for common classes was also a consensus creation and would get revised every few years by a curriculum committee.
Long story short, this is about money and academic power struggles as TFS already states that the Assoc Prof made sure the materials he was using covered the syllabus requirements, but didn't make the appropriate kickbacks to the bookstore and the in-house authors of the common text. It's straight up corruption. University bookstores are a greedy dinosaur that needs to die, and this case especially illustrates why. Fullerton, thy name is Mudd.
I have never observed correlation between book cost and quality, especially in math textbooks. Years back I taught calculus at a major public university and was require to use an expensive calculus text. That piece of garbage actually stated that "integration is more difficult than differentiation because integration is an inverse operation"! The reason symbolic integration is more difficult is that, unlike differentiation, there is no product law for integration so you can not easily break down complex expressions into simple ones that you know how to integrate.
(While the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus says the two are inverse operators for each other, the definition of integration does not involve differentiation - you can as well consider differentiation as the inverse operator.)
What's wrong with making the texts for technical courses (math, science, engineering) free? Put everything online, get volunteers to work on them if there's a demand for them, start with digital copies of excellent Russian texts in the maths and sciences. India did something similar before the internet: the costs of textbooks in these subjects was only the extremely minimal cost of making and distributing the books, and major Indian politicians said it was fine to wholesale make copies of these books!
I promise you, if they invent a drug that cures cancer, they don't need to advertise that shit.
Even on a lesser scale, important drugs don't need advertising. Advertising is for shit drugs that are desperate for a market and customers. It's just a way to milk us.
http://news.slashdot.org/story...
My local university has one that is completely free and has the source code available upon request. I'm trying to 'rewrite' it in an iPython notebook similar to the AeroPy.
I haven't lectured in two years. I've of course been teaching, but have stopped using the method known as "the lecture"—delivering a set amount of material (aka, "covering") from the front of the classroom to a group of mostly quiet, note-taking students. Like greater profs before me, I am a converted lecturer.1
It was Spring 2012 when I went full-steam ahead with the flipped classroom idea for my Computational Fluid Dynamics course. I've written before about how this came about, but the impetus resulted from already having done the lecture capture, live, in a previous version of the CFD course. I uploaded the videos from that live lecture capture to YouTube (after minor editing and cutting into segments) where, since then, they have collected nearly 220,000 public views (checked 20 April'14). My challenge that semester was coming up with class activities—but that should be the topic of another post.
- AeroPy.
Here an Associate Professor has tenure. If you are tenure track you are hired as an Assistant Professor, and become an Associate when you are granted tenure. So it means you've been around for some time and passed your big milestone. Becoming a full professor does not happen for a long time after that, generally at least 10 years, sometimes longer. As a practical matter departments usually only have so many lines for full professors.
So an associate isn't some junior level position or anything. It means a tenured professor with their own research lab, at least where I work.
The professor is teaching one section of a class where different sections are taught by different faculty. As all the students - regardless of which section they are enrolled in - are enrolled in the same course, they should all be studying the same material. While it is not impossible to ensure that this happens when different sections use different texts, it is a lot easier to ensure that this happens when everyone does use the same text.
Yes, what if matrix multiplication is done differently in one book as opposed to the next..
It's linear algebra. Set a syllabus for what needs to be covered, yes, with a little room for teacher-specific enrichment, but requiring the same unethically chosen textbook for everyone is absurd. Linear algebra doesn't change based on what textbook you read it from. The *only* advantage is students have more people to talk with about the problem set if they're all assigned the same book.
Why would you need a $180 book to teach linear algebra? Matrix multiplication is easy. And if you have a state university system the size of California's, you can hire a great educator to write a textbook for less than, say, the 1.8M per year it would cost 10K students going through linear algebra a year to buy them.
So, the Ass Prof take the State Uni. defended by a State Attorney, to State Court and tries to convince a State Judge that the State Uni wronged him.
The amazing thing is that you think the Ass Prof could, ever, possibly win.
But then you probably work in the Academic Industry, do you?
I'll preface this by saying that I was not tenured faculty. But I was adjunct faculty with a thriving career outside of the university and seven years as a part-time faculty member.
This happened to me at local State U (I'm in a flyover state) and ended my years as a professor. I was a top-rated instructor in the department by both student evaluations and faculty observations, advising graduate students, experienced, and had been there a long time teaching courses that I developed and that were well-received.
New leadership came in at the divisional level, and I was called in to a meeting with my chair one day. I was told I could no longer do what I had been doing for at least half a decade: assigning a textbook that was several editions old (there were no substantive changes in the newer editions, just replaced photos) and instructing students on the syllabus to pick the books up for literally pennies on Amazon.com, Alibris, eBay, or other online venues.
Instead, I had to assign the latest issue of the textbook and do it only through the university bookstore, at a cost of >$150.00 in one class, >$200.00 in another (compared to an average of $4.00 plus shipping most semesters for the online used versions). I had it listed as my first assignment on each syllabus—buy a used textbook online and submit proof of purchase (to be sure the students actually did get ahold of the textbooks).
I refused. I said I would provide both options—I'd order the textbook through the university bookstore and provide that as an option to students that preferred to buy new, through the bookstore, but would also allow both current and old editions to be used in my classes for students that wanted to rely on used books. I was threatened again. New only, bookstore only.
I refused. I was fired.
That semester (in 2014) was the last time I set foot on a college campus as a professor, after nearly a decade in the classroom every semester. Again, I wasn't tenured—but it left a significant hole in curriculum and advising. They were more interested in ensuring that students contributed to revenue and partnerships through bookstore purchases than they were in actually enabling students to learn in a cost-effective way.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The institutions themselves are benefitting in revenue terms through bookstore sales, which also benefit publishers significantly in a kind of win-win.
I made a post about my years as a professor below and about being fired for allowing students to work from used textbooks.
What I didn't post below was that in the early '00s, before I was a professor, I worked in a well-known academic publisher of textbooks and journals in the Los Angeles area. I was over a department / topic area and one of the things that we did to stay ahead of revenue neutrality in our publications was ensure that they were "updated" every year. In many cases, preparation for the new "edition" entailed hiring two independent contractors: one freelance photo editor to replace all the images, and another freelance academic (often at a total cost of $1k-$2k tops) to re-do the exercises, tweak a few chapter titles, and perhaps reorder some chapters.
This was a strategy to enable "stale" books (read: books with large presences in used channels) to be revenue positive again (new edition = now more books in used channels, meaning a rash of new sales for 2-4 semesters). The initial investment in the text had in many cases happened years ago; subsequent annual investments were often in the low four figures or even less.
Of course, this high-margin model also enabled us to do deals with universities and their bookstores. Because of the low overhead for many refreshed titles, we could offer favorable terms to them for their revenue generation, often demanding minimum buys or various kinds of exclusivity in exchange for better revenue terms.
It's a kind of wealth transfer from the taxpayers (as student loans), through students, into the pockets of publishers and institutional administrations.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
So this is all about corruption.
When I took Linear Algebra the prof (also the undergraduate chair in addition) had written the textbook. The commercial version, which could be bought on amazon and which other schools used, cost around the same as the one the article mentions. For any classes *at* my school the school had a special version printed and bound especially for them. The printing and binding wasn't the greatest quality and it only included the material used in the specific curriculum of the school, but it was $25 at the university book store. I've always thought that was really cool and I always respected the prof for that.
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Dear Professor: You are but a cog in a well-oiled machine. CSUF did not achieve its reputation as one of the top mathematics universities in the world by requiring less than the best textbooks, written by our own best in the world mathematicians. What? Oh. Apparently, CSUF is not actually the best in the world. My mistake.
James Stewart wrote the most used calculus book in the US.
This is where the money went.
http://www.decoist.com/2011-04-05/james-stewarts-private-house-in-toronto-integral-house/
Now who can blame anyone who seeks to follow in The Master's footsteps?
Sheeesh, you people.
Please do get started on the ethics of the textbook industry. Not everyone has the view of things you do, expecially longitudinally. To some of us, this is valuable and ultimately actionable knowledge. So pease, do share.
It would be very difficult to prove such a case, especially of the authors of the more expensive text had waived their royalties from sales of the text to students that they, themselves teach. Note that the book is sold at a discount.
Professor Bourget is likely fighting a loosing battle because he appears to be one of a team of instructors teaching a core course and is likely not the course coordinator. I think it likely that if one looks at the case in more detail there is probably much more involved, all at the interpersonal level and Professor Bourget will ultimately be on the loosing end.
These two authors are abusing their position by trying to force another professor to use an expensive tex book that they authored. They are acting against the interests of the students and should be fired if possible and reprimanded if it's not possible to fire them.The students should demand that the dean act in their interest not that of the department chair.
What is astonishing is that they can even charge $180+ for a freakin' maths textbook. For god's sake, it's maths! And basic maths at that! Hasn't changed in hundreds of years. No excuse not to use simple online technology for basic courses.
They have it available as a LaTeX file or PDF. Former is needed to see proofing changes.
2nd edition, Enlarged.
It's not just the legal profession and government that has problems with ethics.
Universities have have problems regarding ethics for a long time. I doubt this problem is limited to the USA, but I'll address it from a US perspective.
Among the most fundamental rights arising under the 9th Amendment of the US Bill of Rights ("rights retained by the people") are the rights to ethical conduct on the part of government, on the part of the legal profession. These are fundamental, universal human rights.
Even the appearance of conflict of interest must be avoided when alternatives exist. All provisions of the Bill of Rights that are not specifically limited to the federal government do, of course, apply to the state governments (that in itself is a consequence of the right to ethical practice of law, as well as something we know from James Madison's original text).
In this particular case, the policies of the university are unethical. There is a clear conflict of interest with respect to forcing students to buy textbooks authored by professors on the faculty.
Since these policies are unethical, they violate the applicable 9th Amendment rights with respect to ethics (this would be true even for an university run as a private business, let alone a state university), and are hence illegal.
This conclusion followed irregardless of the details of federal or state law: the Bill of Rights is the highest law in the land. The parties involved in either creating or enforcing these policies demonstrate their lack of fitness to hold any position of public trust or responsibility.
Another right that comes to mind with respect to this situation is the right to not be subject to excessive bureaucracy (also arising under the 9th Amendment, arguably yet another consequence of the right to ethical practice of law), but I won't address that today.
It's also worth noting that these universities receive public funding for research grants (and other purposes). The public has a vested interest in having those that receive such funding be ethical. The government is not allowed, under the 9th Amendment, to provide funding to individuals or groups with ethics problems.
Even private business can be required to be ethical as a consequence of rights arising under the 9th Amendment. This, after all, is how the government gets the authority to make bribing government officials (here and overseas) illegal (an authority that appears nowhere else in the Constitution).
For that matter, the 9th Amendment right to require ethics on the part of private business follows as a consequence of the 9th Amendment right to ethical practice of law.
I'll leave the proof of that last point to the mathematicians in the audience, it's not cookie cutter linear algebra such as one might find in any of the essentially equivalent textbooks on the subject, but they should be able to handle it.
The right to ethical conduct on the part of business applies not just to ethics with respect to government, or customers, but also with respect to interactions between employees and their peers or superiors in a business hierarchy. Bringing this reprimand was inappropriate, and everybody involved should have known that. Remember Nuremberg, people.
Along with the publish or perish system (itself unethical), unethical university practices with respect to textbooks have survived for far too long. Unfortunately, bad things staying the same for many, many years is a strong (perhaps defining) characteristic of US legal history. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to fix this one.
There is an obvious conflict of internet that needs to be addressed when the chair and vice chair of the department wrote the required book. The math department there votes on what book to use so that they can standardize what the students are getting, BUT there's no mention of chair and vice chair not voting on it. If even if they didn't vote, it doesn't resolve the conflict of interest completely since they're the chair and vice chair of the department and therefore you can't prove that the others didn't vote in favor of it to be in favor of them.
Don't be silly. Words like "Conflict of interest", "Fraud", "Kickbacks" and "Unbecoming behavior" only apply to "Those evil business people", not to University Administrators! 8-}
They probably have done this for so long that they don't even know it is wrong, anymore...